Inserting data into OSM which came from a copyrighted source is definitely a no-no (unless that source explicitly gave permission, which has happened in several cases).

If you find some data in OSM which you think looks suspicious, there's a procedure to report it.

Quite often it's down to ignorance, rather than malicious intent, where a new mapper doesn't realise that the map they're copying from is either copyrighted or under a licence which prohibits derivative works.

You've probably just got lucky - commercial data is ahead of OSM in terms of addressing, however you will find errors in pretty much every country (roads that aren't there, roads with the wrong name, roads in the wrong place, etc).

If (when:-) you do find an error, please check it out on OSM and see what it looks like there - if it's wrong in OSM, you can at least fix it.:-)

The map tiles are certainly Apple's own - they have defined their own stylesheet, with their own look.

However the map data those tiles were rendered from appears to be a mix of TIGER in the US and OSM elsewhere. TIGER is a public domain dataset from the US Census Bureau, and OSM is CC-BY-SA.

Looking at the shape of the data is often enough to tell you where it came from. One one level it's modelling the same reality, but in practice mappers tend to make slightly different versions of "the same" object (a road might be smoothly curved, or quite angular, depending on how much effort they went to). As such you can quite easily see when data comes from the same source, even if it's rendered in a different style.

It's pretty conclusively OSM if you look at which small features (footpaths, lanes within a car park, etc) are rendered. This data isn't present in the commercial datasets you can licence from people like TomTom, however it is in OSM (neither Navteq nor TeleAtlas have footpaths, or this kind of micro-mapping of lanes within parking areas).

Based on things like this, typos which appear on both maps, and roads that are in OSM now but aren't in Apple's tiles - it looks pretty clear that they used a snapshot of OSM, specifically one from early April 2010.

GPS devices normally have much worse vertical accuracy than horizontal, unless they have a barometric altimeter.

OSM's database currently just holds latitude and longitude for objects, and you can tag things with a z-level to indicate when something is over or under something else. For 99.99% of objects, that's perfectly fine and sufficient for topological modelling (if you mean topological in the sense of the connections between objects, so that you can calculate a route from A-B-C-D).

For some objects a specific altitude might be worth recording, and since OSM uses an arbitrary key=value store for data you can easily record the altitude for a point if you think it's useful (you might want to record the elevation of a mountain peak, but you probably don't want to record the altitude of a post office or public toilet).

Using a key-value store means OSM has an inclusive data model; you can store whatever data you think might be useful, within reason.

In practice the problem you see (ambiguities in the endgame) are only really an issue for computer Go. Human players rarely disagree over when a game is "over", as typically the outcome becomes obvious long before each stone is played out to the absolute end.

Perhaps a good analogy is poetry: it is perfectly possible for a poem to convey meaning, even if it does not conform to the rules of the language or have a literal meaning (and yet, people still understand it).

The thick book of "how to interpret patterns" is simply a set of standard plays that people have found empirically to work well (in exactly the same way as opening books are used in chess). Like chess, you are free to ignore those patterns if you like, but typically that leaves you in a weaker position than you would be in otherwise.

These patterns are most commonly used in the opening moves, but local instances of them pop up all the time ("if he moves there, I should move here, then he *has* to move there I'll capture these stones").

The rule is that game is over when both players agree that it is over: if there is a disagreement, the game is played on. Some positions lead to an infinite repeat (A captures B, B captures A, A captures B, etc) but thee plays typically don't determine the final score (if the score was equal, and there was an infinite repeat, then humans would simply call it a draw). Computers can recognise trivial cases of this easily, and do OKish with heuristics for simple cases.

However the real difficulty in computer Go is understanding just why humans make the moves they do, as outside of the standard sequences a move is often made intuitively as a way to steer the other player even though the consequences of that move may be some way off (or may need to be abandoned, or redirected, or reused in some unplanned way).

Go is a truly fascinating game, and also a very human one (computers will play it well one day, but probably about the same time that they get good at writing poems, playing tricks, or asking why).

Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday February 14, 2010 @03:14PM
from the for-secretive-tweakers dept.

agoston.horvath writes "I've written a HOWTO on replacing Mac OS X's built-in encryption (FileVault) with the well-known FUSE-based EncFS. It worked well for me, and most importantly: it is a lot handier than what Apple has put together. This is especially useful if you are using a backup solution like Time Machine. Includes Whys, Why Nots, and step-by-step instructions."

Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @04:53PM
from the vlc-generally-rocks dept.

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."

Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday October 11, 2009 @03:31PM
from the your-allotment-of-seconds-on-earth dept.

theodp writes "When he gets some free time away from his gigs at startup Milo and The Register, you won't catch Ted Dziuba doing any recreational programming. And he wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't hire those who don't code in their spare time. 'You know what's more awesome than spending my Saturday afternoon learning Haskell by hacking away at a few Project Euler problems?' asks Dziuba. 'F***, ANYTHING.'"

fzshei writes: Well, the cat's out of the bag. Virgin America's "RED System" has begun to be written about, blogged, and podcasted by enthusiasts excited by the prospect of the startup carrier with a truly unique & innovative product taking flight later this year.
Due to a holdup with the Department of Transportation (DOT) certification process related to political / foreign control issues, VA has been waiting for its wings for over a year since it petitioned the DOT for approval. Vurgin's linux-based custom developed RED System has been raved about on sites ranging from Engaget's Mega tour ( http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/10/mega-hands-on-v irgin-americas-airbus-a320-with-red-in-flight-e/ ) to Gizmodo's blog about DOOM running on VA's Linux environment http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/virgin-americas -airplanes-play-doom-233695.php
Virgin America's own letvafly.com site has a bunch of details on the product offering, as does a video tour with Virgin's Charles Ogilvie ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=609i-OhFhoQ ) that is floating around YouTube.
Virgin America's plight to get its wings has sent many interested to its site in the past couple of weeks. Comments from VA's challengers (legacy carriers like Continental, Delta, and others) are due back later this week.
This week's February 8th Episode #84 of Diggnation also features details about Virgin America's plight ( http://revision3.com/diggnation/2007-02-08 )

Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday February 11, 2007 @02:40AM
from the ethanol-and-fat-pipes-for-all dept.

Arlen writes "As many as 17,000 people (according to police estimates) watched Senator Barack Obama officially announce his candidacy for President in Springfield, Illinois today. He mentioned several things that will interest readers of Slashdot. The Senator said he wanted to free America from 'the tyranny of oil' and went on to promote alternative energy sources such as ethanol — a popular stance in the Midwest where he announced, because of all the corn farmers. He also talked about using science and technology to help those with chronic diseases, which is likely to have been an allusion to his staunch support for stem cell research. Perhaps most of interest to readers here is the following statement halfway through Obama's speech: 'Let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that.' Like nearly everything in his speech, this was met with robust applause from the crowd. You can watch a video of the entire speech at Obama's website."

Saturday's New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the "deadliest weapon aimed at American troops" in Iraq. The author notes, "Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile."

What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than "civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies."